People increasingly rely on the Internet for business and personal use. Unfortunately, the Internet has become a major vector for malware, spam, system intrusions, and other information security vulnerabilities. In order to protect computing systems from undesired and/or illegitimate network traffic, some traditional systems may perform deep packet inspections, analyzing the content and/or characteristics of network packets in transit.
Some traditional deep packet inspection systems may be implemented with software. Unfortunately, software-based deep packet inspection may consume a significant amount of computing resources, such as central processing unit resources. Accordingly, traditional software-based deep packet inspection may require expensive hardware configurations and/or slowing network traffic. Some alternative traditional deep packet inspection systems may be implemented with dedicated hardware components (e.g., either with firmware and/or a dedicated hardware design). Unfortunately, traditional hardware-based deep packet inspection may require complex microcode engines and/or present significant engineering problems. Moreover, traditional hardware-based deep packet inspection systems may be difficult to maintain and update and, therefore, may be unsuited for adapting quickly to new threats. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for systems and methods for performing selective deep packet inspection.